Do humans really still have 9 Useless Body Parts? From a biblical view accepting God as Creator, we understand vestigial structures are indeed vestiges—“footprints”—but not of a hypothetical, unwitnessed, unproven evolutionary origin. Vestigial structures are actually the “footprints” of embryology and the “footprints” of the efficiently engineered designs of our common Designer, God.

Another so-called vestigial organ finds a function. Marine biologists have long thought the “adipose fin” on the back of some fish was vestigial. Located between the dorsal and tail fins, the small adipose fin is often clipped by hatcheries to track the salmon they produce. University of Victoria biologist Tom Reimchen, reasoning that the adipose fin would not persist “for 60 million years unless it had some use,” decided to investigate. He found that removal of the fin forced fish to expend more energy to swim.

Surgeons and immunologists at Duke University Medical School, whose hypothesis was published in an online edition of the Journal of Theoretical Biology, suggest that the job of the appendix is to produce and protect beneficial germs for use in the intestines.